These are exciting times - for me and for particle physics.
The prospects for a Higgs are remote though. The LHC obviously has not found anything.
Update on December 14th: a handful of events without statistical importance seen at the LHC have put the world press into a frenzy. We are living in crazy times. Fact: no Higgs has been found, the mass window is even smaller.
If you take seriously all the rumors going around these days, the combined ATLAS + CMS plots are claimed to yield a 4.3 sigma peak at a Higgs mass of 125 GeV (see for instance Phil's blog).
ReplyDeleteIs it hype and rush to judgement? Is it really the Higgs or a different signal? Did they carefully consider all background contributions?
One can look at this situation from an opposite perspective and say that 5 + 5 fb^(-1) at CERN plus all Tevatron data still yield inconclusive results.
Let's wait another week, and we will know more.
ReplyDeleteI forgot to say: Congratulations Clara,
ReplyDeleteTake care as the little one is on his way!
Ervin
Thank you!
ReplyDeleteSome bloggers (Tommaso, Motl, Gibbs) are convinced that Higgs has been already discovered. According to Prof. Strassler and others, the evidence is inconclusive and more data is needed to make the final call. What many fail to recall is that, even if a "minimal" SM Higgs is proven to exist, there is a large trail of paradoxical consequences that remain unsolved on the theoretical side.
ReplyDeleteSee today's post...
ReplyDelete"Pregnancy and the Higgs"
ReplyDeleteIt had to be *really* dark. I thought that the cosmic microwave background is hard to shield.